18 Facts About James Lees-Milne

James Henry Lees-Milne was an English writer and expert on country houses, who worked for the National Trust from 1936 to 1973.

James Lees-Milne was the second of three children and the elder son of a prosperous cotton manufacturer and farmer, George Crompton Lees-Milne, and his wife, Helen Christina, a daughter of Henry Bailey, JP and Deputy Lieutenant of Coates, Gloucestershire.

James Lees-Milne's sister, Audrey, born in 1905, married Matthew Arthur, 3rd Baron Glenarthur.

The Lees-Milne family belonged to a junior branch of the Lees family that later came to own Thurland Castle, Lancashire, having been tenant farmers on an estate called Clarksfield near Oldham, which they later purchased from the Booth family of Dunham Massey in the reign of James I Succeeding generations became successful as "master cotton spinners and manufacturers".

James Lees-Milne attended Lockers Park School in Hertfordshire, Eton, and Magdalen College, Oxford, from which he graduated with a third-class degree in history in 1931.

From 1931 to 1935, James Lees-Milne was private secretary to George Lloyd, 1st Baron Lloyd.

James Lees-Milne was instrumental in the first large-scale transfer of country houses from private ownership to the Trust.

James Lees-Milne resigned his full-time position in 1950, but continued his National Trust ties as a part-time architectural consultant and committee member.

From 1947 James Lees-Milne published several architectural works aimed mainly at general readers.

In 1993 James Lees-Milne declined a CBE in the New Year's Honours list, having felt that a knighthood was his due.

James Lees-Milne was visiting Diana, Lady Mosley in December 1936 when King Edward VIII abdicated.

James Lees-Milne's purpose was to examine the 17th-century house that she and her husband Sir Oswald Mosley were renting.

James Lees-Milne wrote later how he and Diana had listened to the King's broadcast abdication speech with tears running down their faces.

James Lees-Milne had been a lover of her brother Tom Mitford when they were at Eton College together and was devastated when Tom was killed in action in Burma in 1945.

James Lees-Milne was friendly with many prominent intellectual and social figures of his day, including Nancy Mitford, Diana Mitford, Harold Nicolson, Clementine Hudson, and Cyril Connolly.

In 1951, James Lees-Milne married Alvilde, Viscountess Chaplin, nee Bridges, a prominent gardening and landscape expert.

James Lees-Milne died in a hospital at Tetbury on 28 December 1997.

James Lees-Milne was touched, but valued his independence, had the income to pay rent and did not accept the offer, nor that of his friends, the Duke and Duchess of Devonshire, to live as a permanent guest at Chatsworth House.